1. Field of Invention
This invention relates in general to wireless communication systems. More specifically, the invention relates to methods and systems for managing communication in an emergency communication system.
2. Description of the Background Art
Emergency communication systems are used by emergency service providers such as the fire department, the police force, and hospitals. Each emergency communication system supports a plurality of communication channels, wherein each channel may be dedicated to a group/locality/unit. For example, the fire department can allocate one channel to every school, or other public places such as shopping malls, so as to enable effective communication during an emergency.
This allocation of dedicated channels to different entities results in the possibility of multiple messages being received in the form of radio messages on different channels at one time. The receipt of multiple radio messages at one time creates confusion for an operator who needs to reply/act on each incoming radio message. To avoid this confusion, the operator mutes all the channels except one, so as to clearly follow one channel. This results in the operator being able to follow the channel that is not a muted channel, while the message on the muted channels is lost.
Alternatively, the operator hears overlapping messages. However, in this case, there is a possibility of interference in the overlapping messages, resulting in garbled communication, which may not be of any use. In such a situation, no message being communicated can be used or retrieved.
Hence, conventional techniques are unable to effectively manage the messages being received in all the situations in an emergency communication system. Additionally, the absence of prioritization of incoming data results in the loss of messages.